Comments on: Paul and Slavery: A View by NT Wright

By: Frances

Frances — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:37:38 +0000

Where are the seeds of social justice for gay and transgendered individuals who, as the social slaves of the modern world, are being denied and oppressed by our literal and repressive religious convictions? Or are we already looking at dead trees?

By: folknotions

folknotions — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 01:29:00 +0000

lukelm,

It may be simpler to assume that - if we take Paul completely out of context. Looking to one other example, Paul states in Galatians 3:27-29:

“For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It would seem to me that Paul implicitly recognized that the new kingdom inaugurated through Christ would break down the traditional societal barriers between men and women, slave and master, and races (Jew and Gentile).

It would seem that Paul was giving Philemon the opportunity to do the right thing. And - because it was a personal letter to a friend - he had confidence that Philemon would do it. Hence, direct command wasn’t necessary.

By: lukelm

lukelm — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:21:01 +0000

Not having read this book, I still think it sounds kind of off. This is way too much explainifying to try to justify Paul’s words on slavery. Isn’t it vastly simpler and much more believable to simply state that Paul didn’t have any problem with the institution of slavery? It was such a constant & ubiquitous part of the Greco-Roman world. He never had any intention of “changing the world” as the world related to slavery. He seems to think that the world will end very soon anyway, so he really bothers messing with worldly institutions at all, even if in our modern post-Enlightenment perspective we can see terrible injustices in those institutions.

(That’s why I don’t trust Paul on such things. We take two sentences the guy wrote and turn it into a huge monolithic dogma for our own and everybody else’s lives.)

By: Howie Luvzus

Howie Luvzus — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:17:31 +0000

“In addition, inveghing against slavery per se would have been totally ineffective: one might as well, in modern Western society, protest against the mortgage system.”

Worst argument I’ve seen in a while! Martin Luther King fought this kind of spinelessness in his letter from Birmingham jail. Right is right. Glad the prophets didn’t wimp out like this!